Be In The Know Blog

More often than not, your clients only see the end result of what can be weeks or even months of work that goes on behind the scenes. They aren’t on the creative brainstorming calls or on the phone after hours making those last-minute copy tweaks, and that’s okay if they’re not. Because in the end, all the work you put in to your creative messaging can add up to a huge win for you and the client.

But sometimes the work doesn’t add up. Then what do you do? The answer is simple….

A promoted content strategy is typically the part of your marketing plan that involves advertising on social media to connect a specific audience with a piece of content. A coffee shop might invest in promotion for a blog post detailing seasonal offerings on Facebook, while an event planning service might choose to promote Instagram videos showcasing a recent social occasion

There are plenty of options for this type of promotion — and if you're not sure what's best for you, you're not alone. Here are some basic tips to help you get started.

Today, your brand tone doesn't need to follow a strict set of rules. Companies are allowed to have fun with their messaging; precise targeting on social and paid channels means you don't need to appeal to everyone.

Plus, people expect more of a human feel from brands in the digital age. As HubSpot noted, the emotions an ad evokes in viewers can be more influential on purchase intent than the ad content. Some of the most successful advertisers excel at appealing to emotion, whether through humor, utility, beauty or inspirational messages.

Determining the right voice for your brand can be tricky, though, especially if you want to be funny or irreverent. There's a fine line between striking a relatable chord with your audience and alienating them with tone deafness.

Here are some steps that can help you hit the right note with your branding.

In 2019, most businesses are use some form of content marketing to attract and maintain customers. However, with unemployment at record lows and employers needing to target passive job seekers to fill roles, content marketing is playing in a whole new arena: Recruitment.

More Than Just a Job

Whether someone is actively seeking a new job or simply open to change, people want to know much more about a potential future employer than just what is in the job posting. They want to know what the company stands for and what role they can play in that success. They're envisioning a potential futures for themselves, and looking for a company that aligns with their values. According to CNBC, 86 percent of millennials would consider taking a pay cut to work for a company that shares their values.

Lead-generating tactics play an important role in the digital age. There are hundreds of ways that businesses can get their names out there, but these three basic concepts form a good foundation for a lead-generation strategy. By investing in these three areas, you can boost sales and make a serious online impact.

Paid Search

Paid search is one of the most popular lead-generating tactics, and for good reason: It works. The idea behind paid search is that it can serve your ads to literally anyone who might be interested in your product and, when used effectively, can actually help improve other marketing tactics.

Most marketers know the difference a little eye candy can make when it comes to winning over their audience, and this difference is clear in higher performance metrics for their campaigns.

According to John Medina, author of "Brain Rules," visual content can support information recall by up to 65 percent three days after the information was delivered. Compare that to text-only information, which offers a recall rate of only 10%. That's Cray!

If you haven't given too much thought to the types of images you use in your marketing, it's time to consider how new forms of content might provide a much-needed boost to your campaign ROI. Here's a look at how to leverage images for the greatest impact and improved brand awareness.

Bill Gates wrote an essay titled "Content is King," and wrote, "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet, just as it was in broadcasting."

More than 20 years later, much of the online world has changed, but content is still driving the online engine, with social media largely leading the way. Though it's only one piece of the landscape, content marketing has changed significantly in the last several years.

Let's take a quick look through the last two decades to see where content marketing has been, where it is now and, perhaps most importantly, where it's going.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can make content more user-friendly and empower marketers to work efficiently. However, discussions about AI and content marketing often center on the potential for machines to eventually replace writers. While the technology is already used to generate sports and financial news updates, creating bots smart enough to write with nuance, creativity, original research and critical thinking is far off.

Still, AI's major role in search has significant implications for content marketers.

There's no doubt content marketing works — especially when you regularly publish high quality, helpful content. Companies that publish 11 or more blog posts per month have nearly three times more traffic than companies that publish zero to four blog posts per month, according to HubSpot.

Great content is crucial to successful digital marketing, but content alone can't take your business to the top.

Fifteen years ago it may have been enough, but today's online landscape is so saturated that it's all but impossible for content to rise on its own. Great content doesn't naturally find an audience — it requires assistance. Driving strong content ROI requires a distribution strategy to deliver your content to a relevant online audience.

Too many brands overlook the importance of distribution, and their marketing ROI suffers as a result. If this describes your business, take a step back and examine what you're doing to set your content up for success.